''Burmaleon'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

lacewing The insect order Neuroptera, or net-winged insects, includes the lacewings, mantidflies, antlions, and their relatives. The order consists of some 6,000 species. Neuroptera can be grouped together with the Megaloptera and Raphidioptera in t ...

in the family

Osmylidae Osmylidae are a small family of winged insects of the net-winged insect order Neuroptera. The osmylids, also called lance lacewings, stream lacewings or giant lacewings, are found all over the world. There are around 225 extant species. Descr ...

known from fossils found in Asia. The genus contains a single species, ''Burmaleon magnificus''.

History and classification

When first described, ''R. cratoensis'' was known from a pair of fossil adults, the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

number "HUANG-BP-B-4220" and

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). Of ...

number "HUANG-NIGP163028". At the time of the insects' description, the two specimens were residing in the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, in

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

. Both the winged adults are preserved as inclusions in transparent chunks of yellow

Burmese amber Burmese amber, also known as Burmite or Kachin amber, is amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar. The amber is dated to around 100 million years ago, during the latest Albian to earliest Cenomanian ages of the mid-Cretaceous period. The ...

shaped and polished before study. The

amber Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In Ma ...

specimen was recovered from the amber deposits of

Hukawng Valley The Hukawng Valley ( my, ဟူးကောင်းချိုင့်ဝှမ်း; also spelt Hukaung Valley) is an isolated valley in Myanmar, roughly in area. It is located in Tanaing Township in the Myitkyina District of Kachin State ...

Kachin State Kachin State ( my, ကချင်ပြည်နယ်; Kachin: ), also known by the endonym Kachinland, is the northernmost state of Myanmar. It is bordered by China to the north and east (Tibet and Yunnan, specifically and respectively); Sh ...

in Myanmar. The specific origin location for the fossils is unidentified since the amber pieces were obtained from traders after mining. Burmese amber has been radiometrically dated using U- Pb isotopes, yielding an age of approximately 98.79 ± 0.62 million years old, close to the

Aptian The Aptian is an age in the geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early or Lower Cretaceous Epoch or Series and encompasses the time from 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma to 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma (million years ago), a ...

–

Cenomanian The Cenomanian is, in the ICS' geological timescale, the oldest or earliest age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or the lowest stage of the Upper Cretaceous Series. An age is a unit of geochronology; it is a unit of time; the stage is a unit in the s ...

boundary, in the earliest Cenomanian. The fossils were described in a 2016 paper by an international team of paleontologists led by Justine Myskowiak. The genus name is a combination of ''Burma'', referring to the type location in Burmese amber, and ''leon'', a common suffix name for myrmeleontoid insects. They coined the

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''magnificus'' in reference to the great detail of preservation seen in the fossils.

Description

The species have a full body length ranging between approximately , and both are mostly complete. On the

, the whole individual is preserved except three of the legs, while the

has only body, antennae and wings present. The heads are wider than long, with medium

compound eyes A compound eye is a visual organ found in arthropods such as insects and crustaceans. It may consist of thousands of ommatidia, which are tiny independent photoreception units that consist of a cornea, lens, and photoreceptor cells which distin ...

positioned on the sides and no

ocelli A simple eye (sometimes called a pigment pit) refers to a form of eye or an optical arrangement composed of a single lens and without an elaborate retina such as occurs in most vertebrates. In this sense "simple eye" is distinct from a multi-l ...

present. The antennae are thread- like in appearance and at least half as long as the fore-wings. The legs are slender and attached to the long

prothorax The prothorax is the foremost of the three segments in the thorax of an insect, and bears the first pair of legs. Its principal sclerites (exoskeletal plates) are the pronotum (dorsal), the prosternum (ventral), and the propleuron (lateral) on ea ...

, with all the legs showing distinct apical spurs on the tibia. The long

forewings Insect wings are adult outgrowths of the insect exoskeleton that enable insects to fly. They are found on the second and third thoracic segments (the mesothorax and metathorax), and the two pairs are often referred to as the forewings and hindwi ...

are a

hyaline A hyaline substance is one with a glassy appearance. The word is derived from el, ὑάλινος, translit=hyálinos, lit=transparent, and el, ὕαλος, translit=hýalos, lit=crystal, glass, label=none. Histopathology Hyaline cartilage is ...

with a brown

pterostigma The pterostigma (plural: pterostigmata) is a group of specialized cells in the outer insect wing, wings of insects, which are often thickened or coloured, and thus stand out from other cells. It is particularly noticeable in dragonfly, dragonfli ...

and brown venation, but no color patterning. There are small trichosors present along the apical rear edges of the forewings, but unlike the modern genus '' Gumilla'',

nygma A nygma (plural nygmata) is a spot on the wings of certain insects which have a peculiar dense cuticular structure. They are found only in the wings of endopterygotes but found only in some insect groups. Nygmata are found in caddisflies, scorpi ...

ta are not present on any of the wings. The Rs vein of all four wings have six distinct branches and the positioning of the first branch is near the center point of the wing. In the fore-wings the area between the costa vein and the ScP is narrow as is the area between the costal margin and the combined subcostal plus radial veins.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q23057881 Neuroptera genera Prehistoric insect genera Cretaceous insects Fossil taxa described in 2016 Prehistoric insects of Asia Burmese amber Fossils of Myanmar